


Calling, Each to Each

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dark, Gen, Transitional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 15:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok, this is character study and relationship building, of a sort. It actually does grow directly out of trying to figure out where the various characters are going to stand at the start of next season. To me it looks like Mycroft and Sherlock may both find themselves very isolated, from each other and from the people they've lived with and loved...and those two men look ill-prepared to know what to do about that other than bear it in silence. </p><p>The underlying assumptions for this fiction are that Moffat's accurate and Molly's kind of outgrown any belief in a romance with Sherlock. That Sherlock is at least homoromantically tied to John, does love Mary in some sense, is committed to their marriage. That Janine's still someone he really likes. That the seeming reduction in Sherlock's contact with Lestrade continues as it was during season 3. I am also assuming, based on very nebulous cues, that whatever does tie Mycroft and Lestrade together, it's also taking some hits...and Mycroft being Mycroft has no idea what to do about that in the least. The story does't resolve here. But it does imply resolution may be possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mycroft was gone…gone in a way Sherlock didn’t even know how to address. Couldn’t talk about. Hated, and couldn’t correct.

Oh, his older brother was alive. He still worked in the shadows formed by MI6, MI5, and any number of sister organizations. He still went daily to the Diogenes. He still lived in rooms across the way on Pall Mall—when he wasn’t in residence at the country house. When he crossed paths with Sherlock he was wan, polite—and terse, disappearing as quickly as possible.

Things had been that way for some time, growing worse and worse from the time of Sherlock’s return. By now, the two brothers had reached an unprecedented state of truce—a truce rooted in Mycroft’s complete and utter reserve around his younger brother.

Sherlock couldn’t talk about it. It was private. It was—complicated.

Therefore he was sitting at Mary Watson’s table, drinking hot black tea, balefully watching the ritual of feeding the baby strained spinach.

“It’s a repulsive color,” he growled. “No wonder she spits it out.”

“She cries if I don’t offer it,” Mary said, cheerfully. “Yes, yes, lovey, that’s a beautiful long drool! Now let your mum wipe it, there’s a good girl…”

“Revolting.”

“I’ll remember not to give you any come dinner time,” Mary said, still good natured. “You are eating dinner here, yes?”

“No,” he grumbled. “Why do you always assume I’m staying for dinner?”

“Because you always say no, and between you and John you always end up staying,” Mary said. She paused and looked at him. “After the past six months, love, it’s no surprise. We’ve been through the drugs and the murder and the exile-that-wasn’t. Be kind—we worry.”

“You sound like m….”

“Like….?” She gazed at him, blue eyes suggesting he complete his sentences so she didn’t have to.

“Like Mummy,” he said, lying outright.

“Not John,” she said. “That fibbing thing, remember?”

“Not fibbing,” he said, and sulked into his chair.

“Mmmm-hmmm. Here, lovey-duck, have a biscuit….” She avoided clarifying whether baby Em or Sherlock was the “lovey-duck” in question by shoving a big, chewy American-style ginger biscuit toward each of them. “Your Mum doesn’t worry, she outright frets.”

Sherlock ate his biscuit and drank his tea. He made faces at Em. He nodded sharply when John came home, and sat silent as the married couple danced the ritual of evening greetings, discussion of meals, making of tea, contemplation of scotch or beer…

The two were conniving—conspiring against Sherlock. He knew the symptoms by now, and tolerated them only because he’d accepted it was all done in goodwill and affection. Mary gave the odd little head-jerk that meant “come talk in the other room,” and John rolled his eyes in the “what-now” manner he had down cold.

They weren’t as quiet as they thought they were. When they slipped into the pantry Sherlock could still make out their whispered dialog.

“Take him out for a bit of a run before dinner, John. He’s miserable and won’t tell me why. Something to do with Mycroft, I think.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he won’t mention the man’s name.”

“Does he ever willingly?”

“John, he shifted from ‘Mycroft’ to “Mummy.’ I can’t think of a time he preferred talking about his mother to talking about his brother.”

“Mmmm.” John sounded somewhat convinced.

Sherlock scowled. That woman was entirely too astute for his good. And he rather resented “being taken for a run.” So when they came in he’d kicked off his shoes, stripped off his jacket, and was jigging baby Em on one knee, clearly far too busy to go out for a walk around the neighborhood.

He didn’t want to talk about Mycroft. He was afraid of what he might realize if he did.

oOo

“Change the subject. Now.”

“Why? Afraid of what I see?” Sherlock, dressed carelessly in his pajamas and dressing gown and nothing more, flounced across the sitting room at 221B and dropped all akilter in the homely chrome and leather armchair. “Oh, but that’s right. You don’t _do_ ‘friends.’” His eyes hid behind drooping lids and thick lashes. “What do you ‘do’ then, Mike? Strangers?”

Mycroft had retreated as the conversation played out—a reprise of one they’d had almost a year before, only louder and more intense. The older man had shifted from the chair to the fireplace, then almost raced across the room to hover, arms crossed, behind the kitchen table, having paused to start a kettle brewing—as though that had been the reason for his flight.

“I don’t ‘do’ any of it,” Mycroft snapped.

Sherlock smirked. “Oh, now we both know that’s not true. A little weekend shag, a quicky between projects.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mycroft growled. “You never did.”

“And you presume to suggest I’m the one afraid of sex,” Sherlock snarled back, refusing to stir from his chair, refusing to flee the conversation the way Mycroft did.

“I thought we were talking about ‘friends,’” Mycroft said, lingering with acid sweetness on the word. “Or was that a euphemism?”

“You mean the people you sleep with aren’t friends?” Sherlock asked, smug and stroppy. “Enemies, then? Strangers?”

“Change the subject, Sherlock.” Mycroft didn’t often venture into direct, burning command mode. He was attempting it, though…and failing, catastrophically. Hearing his own voice shake, he paused, gathered himself, and returned to the easier strategy of attacking Sherlock rather than defending himself. “And you’re doing so well? Still caught between Miss Hooper, who’s finally realized you’re incapable of being what she wants, that Irish girl—who may make you into what she wants, if you’ve got the nerve to let her—and…ah, yes. John Watson and his dear wife.”

Sherlock wanted to be the one demanding a change of topic, then, but he dared not give way. “Caught between them? I think you’ve misunderstood—but, then, with your limited experience of friendship…”

“Not so inexperienced as to think it appropriate to have left John unaware of your survival,” Mycroft said. “Nor so foolish as to think the Irish girl wouldn’t mind being used merely to break into Magnussens’s office. Or to miss the obvious fact that after the past five years Miss Hooper’s been permitted to see enough of your hidden life to know you’re not capable of the rose covered cottage, the white picket fence, the dog and the evening at the pub she’d so like to splice to your relationship. You’re playing all three—and the two you could have you don’t want, and the two you want you dare not have.”

“And you?” Sherlock’s temper was near boiling. “Who do you want that you won’t admit to, Mike?”

“Change the subject. _Now._ ” The words were out so fast and so furious they seemed to shiver the air in the room and rattle the china in the cupboards. “Now…” The repeat was quieter, but more desperate.

“No.”

Mycroft drew a breath. “Very well, then, brother mine. It appears there is no reasoning with you…so I shall take my leave.” He turned his back on his brother, and sought out his umbrella in the entryway.

“Mike…” Sherlock wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, suddenly. He dealt badly with uncertainty. Insecure, he shifted back to teasing, prodding sark. “Running away from intimacy, brother?”

“Your definition of intimacy seems to be somewhat lacking,” Mycroft snapped back. “Little wonder you’ve got ‘friends’ but no lovers.” And with that he gripped his umbrella, swept open the door, and left, feet rattling down the stair as though he couldn’t exit 221B fast enough.

Sherlock slumped deeper into the chair, furious—with Mycroft, with himself, with the entire odd, muddled mess. He was sure there was something wrong with Mycroft—but somehow every time he attempted to address Mycroft’s issues, he found Mycroft tossing them back into Sherlock’s life and relationships, as though somehow the two had bearing on each other.

He and his brother were nothing like each other, though, Sherlock thought. Not in this. He had friends. He did. And if sometimes he found his own connections confusing, that didn’t alter the fact that they were real, and deep, and profound. Nameless….but profound.

What did Mycroft have that compared? Nothing! He had his brotherhood to Sherlock, and nothing else. Nothing at all.

Not so much as a goldfish.

He was alone…and appeared unable to change that.

Why, then, did he keep trying to turn the conversations back on Sherlock, as though his younger brother’s successes were as clearly failures as Mycroft’s empty life?

He didn’t know—and something assured him he didn’t want to know.

That was one of the nights he backslid, and retreated into old habits. Not the most dangerous ones—he stayed free of the cocaine and the heroin. But he had a knob of premium hashish hidden in the Persian slipper behind the pack of cigarettes. It was soothing.

That night “soothing” was a good thing—a very good thing.

oOo

“Par-tay!” Mary said, and grabbed a notepad. She began jotting things down immediately. “Halloween party. I can invite Molly and her latest sweetie, and Janine, and Elaine and little Archie and Mrs. Hudson and…” She rattled on and on, picking up momentum, at last running out of steam. “Who else?” she asked.

“What about Greg?” John said. “I don’t see him often these days. Not so many cases with the Met. It would be good to see him.”

“Won’t come,” Sherlock said.

“Why not?” Mary asked, with a campy pout. “I throw good parties!”

“That you do, love,” John said, and drew her to sit half on the arm of his chair and half in his lap. The two took a moment for what Archie sometimes called “icky kissy-face.” Sherlock sometimes agree with Archie’s dismay.

Lestrade wouldn’t come because Lestrade had less and less to do with them all. Sherlock wasn’t sure whether the older man still worked with Mycroft—but there was less sign that the two men tag-teamed Sherlock’s business in tandem. Of course, since Magnussen’s murder Mycroft had been very wary about what he involved himself in, where his brother was concerned. Too much involvement could bring down trouble on both of them.

Maybe Lestrade sensed that. Maybe Mycroft had even discussed it with him? Sherlock could imagine the two older men talking at the Diogenes, over glasses of scotch. “It’s a matter of appearances,” Mycroft would say. “There can’t be any indication of nepotism or of Sherlock having undue influence over me. You may want to be careful, too—you’re still recovering from the scandal when he jumped.”

What would Lestrade say, though? Once Sherlock would have assumed the bluff, good-natured man would brush it off with a laugh. But they’d somehow grown apart since the jump from St. Barts. In spite of the warmth of Lestrade’s greeting on his return, Sherlock and he had never quite managed to fall back into harness together.

Maybe now he’d see Mycroft’s warn-off as a good excuse to cut ties with the younger brother?

Sherlock hated that. He hated the way he seemed, these days, to have many friends—but no actual intimacy. John and Mary and Em were a solid unit, to which Sherlock was attached—but of which he was not fully a part. Molly loved him—but had grown sensible and wary about him, openly conceding she loved best what she couldn’t have and wouldn’t enjoy if she did have it. Janine scared Sherlock stupid, because it had become plain she might manage true intimacy—and her alert, practical self suggested to him that if they did cross that line, he would never again be free.

Here he was, more surrounded by friends than ever before in his life—and alone.

He remembered the previous day. He'd walked to the window and looked down at Mycroft, who stood in front of Speedy’s smoking a cigarette and shifting restlessly from foot to foot as he waited for his sleek black car to arrive. Mycroft waited alone.

Sherlock wondered how they could be so different—and, yet, in their loneliness, so alike…

oOo

“Are you coming to John and Mary’s Spook-do?” Sherlock asked, as he and Lestrade walked away from a rare shared case together.

“Not likely,” Lestrade said, eyes on the pavement, dodging puddles. “Not really my sort of thing.”

“Oh, for goodness sakes,” Sherlock snapped. “You’re nothing if not a party animal, Lestrade. A pint-at-the-pub sort of man. A good bloke. You can’t leave John and Mary high and dry.”

“Doubt I’m the only person they invited,” Lestrade said, voice amused and ironic. “They’ll be fine. You just want someone to talk crime with.”

“Granted, it would improve the conversational resources of the company,” Sherlock said. “But, no. I’m concerned. You seem to be isolating yourself from old friends. I am told that’s a sign of depression—among other things.”

“Times change,” Lestrade said. “You’re not crawling up my bum begging for cases any more, yourself. Just how things go, you know?”

“No,” Sherlock growled, “I do not know. If John and Mary thought to invite you, it’s because they value you and your presence in their lives. You ought to go.”

Lestrade sighed. “Fancy dress?”

“If you mean do you have to wear ridiculous clothing—yes. But Mary assures me it can be highly restricted—I am going as a consulting detective.”

“How will they know?”

“I’m wearing The Hat.”

“Ah, yes. Well. Obvious, that. And if I go as a Met detective?”

“I should think your warrant card would constitute sufficient costuming, all things considered, yes.”

“That means you’ll have to give mine back, won’t you?”

Sherlock grudgingly returned the card he’d pick-pocketed only minutes earlier. “You and Mycroft—you’re both so fussy about your stupid warrant cards and passes.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Lestrade said, and placed the card in the pocket farthest from Sherlock. “I’m sure Mycroft just loves thinking of you running free through all the high-clearance buildings he knows about.” He snorted. “Someday you’re going to give that man a heart-attack, you know.”

“Only because he’s a pig.”

“No, he’s not.”

“You always liked him best,” Sherlock snapped, in an attempt at whiny teasing. It didn’t play the way it had in his mind, though, sounding both too pitiful and too accurate. He clamped his mouth tight.

Lestrade said nothing, pacing along in silence.

“You did like him best,” Sherlock ventured, after too long a gap in conversation.

“Hardly know him,” Lestrade said. “Private man, your brother.” He sighed. “Like I said—things change.”

Sherlock stopped, and stared at the retreating back. “You miss him.”

Lestrade shrugged, and turned, walking backward. “I miss you all, you prat. But—really, things _do_ change. You can’t bring back yesterday, not for blood or money or tears. Gone is gone.”

Sherlock’s head spun with the vision of himself and Mycroft, lone asteroids hurtling through the firmament, slightly off-course from everyone they knew and loved—off course even from each other. The two would move deeper and deeper into space, spinning away from the light and warmth of the sun, the comforting companionship of the planets and moons and other asteroids. What was the physics principle about inertia? Once you started in a particular direction, it took force to move you out of that direction, didn’t it?

You had to actively work to change the vector of your travel.

He looked at himself and Mycroft, and shivered.

oOo

“I’m not lonely, Sherlock.”

“Then you should be.”

“Sherlock, it’s dangerous—for me, and for anyone I ventured to care for. And who would I befriend? Really—goldfish.”

“You once told me only an idiot is bored—that even an empty wasteland offered an infinity of fascinations. Maybe goldfish do, too.”

“Caring is hardly an advantage.”

“Solitude isn’t, either.”

“Are you planning on moving into my Pall Mall rooms again?” Mycroft snapped, voice caustic. “I’ll have to increase the insurance coverage again. It’s been so long since you used to set the sofa on fire during your little ‘experiments.’”

“God forbid,” Sherlock snapped. “Live with you? We’d kill each other.”

Mycroft sniffed, and turned away. “Yes, well. It’s not like either of us lack the skill.”

Which was, for Mycroft, diplomacy. Rather than calling Sherlock a murderer outright, he’d conceded his own field skills for a change.

“How does this end, Mike?” Sherlock shivered, trying to deduce the future that lay ahead of them. “You and I, each alone, each growing older and slower, until we stop entirely? Will some future Met detective come in and conclude we’ve not been killed, but merely stopped in our chairs, too worn out to keep on going?”

Mycroft looked out the windows of 221B, staring at the street below. He said nothing.

“I don’t want to end that way,” Sherlock whispered.

“I don’t know how to stop it,” Mycroft said—and Sherlock had known him enough years to hear the hopelessness slip like dust blown across marble, dimming the brighter tones of his voice.

oOo

“If you don’t like where your life is heading, love, _change it.”_ Janine’s tones were brisk and wry and without sentiment. “For the love-a God, Sherl, of all the people to get stuck: you do what you want to do. You grab what you care about. You’re Sherlock—snap out of it.”

“I don’t do people all that well,” Sherlock said.

She cocked her head—and laughed. “Yeah, well—just because it’s not pretty doesn’t mean it’s not effective. You mostly get what you want, you silly tosser.”

He considered it. “And if I want too much? Or what isn’t mine to claim?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she pointed out.

“But…”

“But nothing. Shezza, me-darlin’ me-love, don’t be a complete idjit. Trying may hurt—but not trying? You know that one will be the death of you, don’t you?”

He nodded, and began to think things through.

He might, he thought, have to actually work at friendship. And love. He might even need to risk kissing a few people.

But he wouldn’t end up alone, in the void, slipping into the darkness in solitude.

Having concluded as much for himself, he started considering Mycroft…

oOo

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sherlock. I do not attend Halloween parties.”

“John and Mary will be disappointed.”

“Hardly.”

“I’ll be disappointed.”

“At the risk of repeating myself…hardly.”

“Molly loves to see you.”

“Ditto, ditto, etc.”

“Mrs. Hudson’s going to be there.”

“Ah, I see. Reverse psychology: you really don’t want me to go. Mission accomplished, baby brother. I shall spend the evening at the Diogenes and go home at ten.”

“I’ll send Lestrade to kidnap you and bring you over.”

“Change the subject, Sherlock.” Mycroft’s voice was suddenly cold and empty.

“Handcuffs and all.”

“Now.”

The vision came again—this time of Mycroft, alone, forever alone, trapped in a bell jar, like a Victorian specimen under glass. He knew nothing else. He feared change as much as he might also yearn for it.

“It’s been a while since the three of us were together,” Sherlock said.

“We never were together,” Mycroft pointed out. “That was the idea, after all. Lestrade could go where I couldn’t go, and be who I could never be.”

The words suggested all Mycroft saw were his own limits.

“Still—we were a team,” Sherlock said.

“You don’t need me, now,” Mycroft said. “And even if you did—things changed.”

Sherlock had murdered Magnussen—and Mycroft could not follow him beyond that point. From that moment on, they were brothers—but separate.

Mycroft could kill, at need or on command, within the purview of his professional calling.

He would not murder—and, in the end, it was a difference he and Sherlock couldn’t bridge. Sherlock could murder, for his own reasons and to accomplish his own aims, entirely aside from the good of the nation or the needs of the many.

“I’m not a passionate man,” Mycroft murmured. “Dry. Discreet. Very ‘J Alfred Prufrock’ when all is said and done.”

“I hear the mermaids singing. I do not think they sing for me.”

“Not a perfect quote—but close,” Mycroft said.

The sun was setting and the flat was dim. The elder brother stood at the window, looking out, unware of how intently his brother studied him. Janine was right, Sherlock thought. To change your life, you only had to act—but Mycroft would not act.

He wondered why the mention of Lestrade had brought the conversation to this maudlin, echoing end.

He feared he knew the answer.

He was going to change his own life, he thought—then wondered if it was possible to act to change Mycroft’s too.


	2. Surveillance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I didn't mean to start another small series, but the first free-standing asked for a sequel, which didn't get finished in a chapter's worth of time. So--this and another chapter or two to come.
> 
> Sherlock's going to change his life. He's not really sure into what--but he's by jingo sure how to start changing things. And he's taking Mycroft along for the ride. Mycroft Just does't know it, yet.

“Yeah, right, surveillance,” Janine said, every note underlining her ironic disbelief. “Me. Y’want me to come along of an evening with you for surveillance? Pull the other one, Shez. What you really up to?”

“I’m really up to investigating that Moriarty thing. I told you. Is it so hard to believe?”

“If it was for your brother Mike, no. Or you and John harin’ off on something. Or that sweetheart of a copper you run with sometimes. Yeah, I’d believe you then, Sherl. But get serious, love—this is me. Janine. The girl you suckered into an affair just to get access to my boss.” She grimaced, and Sherlock felt again the shame and frustration he felt every time he realized that the pain he’d inflicted was real—that the relationship he’d mimicked was… damaged? Destroyed? Lost to him, somehow.

It had seemed like such a good idea when he’d thought of it. Nice girl, easy to get along with, not too boring or hard on the eyes. Of all the ways to get to Magnussen, Janine had seemed both the most efficient and the least painful, an easy choice when the options were considered. And if she took it seriously, well—people did, didn’t they? And they got over it all the time. Picked badly, lost a round, brushed themselves off, started again. Not his problem if she was gullible—if anything, it made his job easier.

But she wasn’t gullible, and he wasn’t entirely acting, and when it all came crashing down abd he found she was hurt, he actually cared--and it just wasn’t at all what he’d thought he was getting into going in.

He smiled—lips tight, jaw set hard. “Just out to the pub a time or two. Keep a weather eye for me. I can’t look everywhere at once.”

The look she gave him was unimpressed. “So invite John.”

“Not the impression I want to give, is it?” he snapped. “Different cover, a fellow out with his mate. Not the same as a fellow out with a girl. People behave differently.”

“Which matters why?”

“Because they’ll be on their watch with a couple of men—unless they think we’re drunk, or stupid, and then all they’ll do is try to bully us—or avoid us. A man out with his girl, that’s different.”

“Not your girl, Shez.” Her voice was firm and unforgiving.

“Oh, come on—you know it will be fun. It always was, wasn’t it? A few pints, a few rounds of darts, a corner booth.”

Her silence made it quite clear she recalled what their former use of corner booths had been. “Not your girl,” she repeated, after too long a silence. “No corner booth for you, lad.”

“It’s not convincing without.”

“Next you’ll be telling me it’s not convincing without a bit of slap and tickle in the shadows, either.”

He hadn’t intended to tell her anything of the sort. The activity, after all, was implied. He huffed, and gave her a pale, baleful glance, then determined that the activity was still implied and would be dealt with in its time. First he had to convince Janine to go out to the pub with him.

“People talk at pubs,” he said.

“People talk all sorts of places to other people. You need the right people saying the right things.”

“Which is why I picked the right pub with the right regulars.”

“Mmmm?”

“The Copper Mug—Geek heaven. If anyone’s got ideas how Moriarty pulled that off, they do.”

She considered, then sniffed—but it wasn’t convincing. She was reasonably impressed. “Well, it’s a start,” she said, grudgingly. “How do you expect to get them talking about it, though?”

“Thought I’d leave that to you,” he said, then slipped into an upper register and an unconvincing Dublin accent, “Oooh, that Moriarty’s a clever one, isn’t he? Smart as a whip, that one. He’s got all England runnin’ around trying to work out how he did it, the sleek hoor!”

She smacked his arm, laughing and scowling at the same time. “You haven’t the way, Sherl, not to mention you’re bollocks as a soprano.”

“So are you. Mezzo at best.”

“Contralto, yeah, and damn good at it, I’ll have you know.” She sighed. “Ah, what the hell. You’re always good for a laugh or two. And that Moriarty’s a piece of work. So, yeah, fine. When, where, how?”

"Tomorrow night. Maybe follow-up later. We can decide about later at John and Mary’s Spook-do.”

“Wasn’t going.”

“Now you are.”

“Bossy prat.” She grinned, though. “Yeah, fine. Costumes?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you wearing?”

“The Hat.”

“That’s all?” She managed to make it sound quite scandalous.

He shot her an evil look. “Ordinary clothes _and_ The Hat.”

Her eyes sparkled, and she leaned toward him. “Always liked you in just The Hat.”

He flustered. “You’re not my girl,” he said, and wanted to shoot himself, as it came out all wrong and meaning the wrong thing. He’d meant she’d broken up with him—that they had yet to change that. It came out as though he wasn’t interested in negotiating that change.

Her eyes went cool, and she drew away again. “Yeah. Right. I’ll remember.”

“No, that’s not…”

She met his eyes, calm and contained. “Yeah, Sherl?”

He looked away, all tight-strung tension. “Anyway. We’ll work it out at the party, when I’ve got a better idea of some other things.”

She nodded, and returned to the plate of shawarma. Sherlock retreated into the lunch crowd.

He wasn’t good at this. He wasn’t good at all.

oOo

“How do you change your life?” he asked John that weekend, as they loped around the track taking turns pushing baby Em’s pushchair ahead of them.

John, already a bit overheated from the run, panted beside him. He reset one hand in the center of the pushchair handle, and used the other to sweep soaked hair off his forehead. “What?”

“If you want to change things. Live—differently. How do you go about it?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, you’ve done it,” Sherlock said. It seemed obvious to him—a man who had done medical school, done the army, done the years on Baker Street with Sherlock, done the years of mourning, found Mary, started a new life with her. John, if anyone, had to know how to change your life—turn things around. “How do you start over?”

John shot a disbelieving glance sideways, and jogged on, carefully patterning his breathing. He always had to push too hard when he ran with Sherlock—the man’s long legs ate up the miles, and no amount of physical neglect ever seemed to cut into his ability to race along with an easy, loping stride. John, a half-foot shorter, had to work just to hold his place beside him. “No idea,” he gasped, and kept on.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sherlock scowled, and unconsciously spent his frustration on a quicker pace, surging forward, feet drumming his annoyance. “Of course you know.”

John, unwilling to be beaten, pushed harder, leaving him barely enough wind to gasp, “Sorry. Clueless, me. Ask Mary.”

Sherlock drifted into a meditative trance as he considered the suggestion. Mary… a former undercover operative. Skilled enough to lose herself quite effectively when she ran away from her former profession. Able to fool even Sherlock for months on end. Apparently living the life she honestly wanted, now, with a fresh name, a fresh family… Yes. Mary might indeed have something to teach Sherlock about change.

“Sherlock…”

He jogged along, thinking about it. She seemed to know how to leave her ego behind. How to walk away from any existing personal investments. How to accept challenges she must still find unexpected and disturbing.

“Sher….lock….”

She was making it work, too. A good mother. A good wife—and a good wife for John, now that he and she both understood better what drew them together. A good friend. He liked her. He smiled to himself, a sudden, bright expression unfamiliar to him. Yes. If he asked she’d answer….

“Sh…Sh…Sher…Lock…”

“I’m thinking, John.”

“Sh…..erl…”

“Thinking!”

“Sher…Fuck. I quit. Hear me, Sherlock? This is the sound of me quitting. Finish the loop. I’ll be here when you come around again. Me and Em. we’ll wait for you here by the lake.”

Sherlock paused and looked back. John was yards back, leaning heavily over the pushchair, face mottled white and bright red, sweat streaming down, grey t-shirt plastered to his body. Em was making grumpy sounds, now that the unexpectedly fast ride was over.

“What are you doing back there, John?”

John glared at him, raised a finger, and growled. “Deduce it, genius,” before flopping wearily into one of the benches beside the track.

Sherlock did run the rest of the loop—but he was very polite when he got back, and didn’t tease John even a little about his failure to keep up. Instead, all he said was, “Thank you for the suggestion. I will have to speak with Mary.”

“You were thinking about my wife the whole time?”

“Yes.”

John sighed, then smiled to himself as they walked back along the path. That was the thing about Sherlock. And Mary, for that matter. Only with people like them could a husband hear that his best friend was obsessing about talking to his wife—and know it was all good.

oOo

“Oi, Sherlock—yeah, here.” Lestrade waded through the Copper Mug’s thronging horde. He was a bit stocky, a bit laddish, a bit old for the clientele—but, Sherlock thought with a smile, he still managed to fit in. Even with all the tells against him, he seemed to melt into the crowd, radiating a sense of comfort and belonging.

"’S Lestrade, yeah?” Janine said, leaning forward against the rails of the pool table.

“Mmmmm.”

She smiled. Sherlock had noticed most women smiled when they saw Lestrade—at least, those old enough to have passed the age of fixation on boy bands. As he approached, her smiled brightened further. “Wotcher!” she said, cheerily. “Haven’t seen you in forever.”

Lestrade barely faltered. It took eyes as sharp as Sherlock’s to realize the man hadn’t recognized her for a moment. But, then, they hadn’t been in contact all that much. The wonder was Lestrade remembered her at all. But that was part of what made him a good detective and a good agent. He grinned, and slid into the corner near the table. “Wotcher, Janine. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Sherl insisted,” she said, with a preen that was intended to tease—phoney possessiveness, artificial pride at being courted. Sherlock wondered if Lestrade was alert enough to catch the softer, kinder echo of those feelings under her show. A glance at the brown eyes studying Janine suggested that perhaps he did.

Sherlock was still pondering that—that Janine, in spite of everything he’d done wrong, was still more than a little pleased that he asked her out, that he counted her into his hunt—this time as an informed partner—that she was his pick.

It was unnerving….

….But in a good way.

“Yeah, the silly wanker called me out, too,” Lestrade said, then grinned. “Don’t think he picked me for my company, though.”

She shifted into a mode that was almost unreadable to Sherlock, somewhere between amused and ambiguously vague. “Oh, I don’t know…” She looked at him, even as she slipped her fingers through Sherlock’s. “Bet you’ve got your own appeal.”

“Nah. Just my own warrant card,” Lestrade said, quietly, inaudible to anyone more than a few feet away. “Gonna get a pint before you fill me in. Get either of you anything while I’m at the counter?”

Sherlock pushed his own pint glass down the rail. “Guinness.”

“Same.” Janine added her own, then took up a pool cue. “When I finish the game with Sherl, want to play a round?”

Lestrade grinned, grunted a careless agreement, and ambled off to collect their drinks. When he came back Janine had lost, but with good natured amusement. “You’re good,” she told Sherlock.

He smirked, unable to hide his pride. “There’s an old table at the country place. Father and Mycroft and I used to play, when I was younger.” He didn’t mention the Other One. They were all silent about the Other One.

“Mycroft plays?” Lestrade grinned, amused and amazed. “Our Mycroft? The only thing I’d have said he could do with a cue is…rude.”

Sherlock grimaced. “He’s quite good.” Which was as close as he was willing  to come to admitting that if Mycroft got the cue early enough in the game, he cleared the table without Sherlock getting a chance to score.

Lestrade and Janine both gave him looks that suggested they understood the unstated truth only too well. They were, he thought, getting too good at the observation thing. He looked at Lestrade. “Game?”

Lestrade nodded. “Don’t know how I’ll do. Been a few years since I played much.”

Sherlock smirked, reading the hidden confidence. “I expect you’ll be a challenge,” he said. “Worth betting?”

“Might be worth putting a tenner on the rail,” Lestrade said, eyes twinkling.

The two men straightened, evaluating each other. They both fished in their wallets and drew out ten-pound notes that they weighed down under an empty bottle knicked from the neighboring table. They racked up the balls and lagged for the break, leaving Janine to watch from the side, sitting at a round café table that soon was crammed with attractive young men offering to “explain” the fine points of play.

Sherlock’s attention split between the game, Lestrade, the room at large, and the subtle game Janine played while the young men courted her attention. She had started a murmuring sub-conversation about the Moriarty All-Britain Special that quickly filled in any gaps in dialog left by the game.

Lestrade was good…good enough that Sherlock quickly concluded that at one time in his past he’d been that peculiar species of non-professional whose primary income is extracted from “casual” games in various locals. In other words, a shark…

“How long were you hustling?” Sherlock asked, wincing as Lestrade called a fancy shot and dropped a ball.

“Eh. Few years undercover,” Lestrade said. “Before that I was almost good enough, but determined to keep my nose clean. Already knew where I wanted to end up.”

MI5 and the Met, no doubt.

“But when you went undercover?”

“Turns out to be a useful cover story. Amazing the assumptions people make about pool hustlers.”

“Amazing,” Sherlock echoed, and hip-bumped the table just as Lestrade took a sensive shot.

“Oi! No fair!”

“Not tournament play,” Sherlock snipped, and called his own shot, now that Lestrade had to step out. He sank the first, and the second—both simple, clean shots. Then he got a bit lofty in his aspirations, and called a complicated fancy shot banking off the cushions. He missed, and swore.

Lestrade, on his mettle now, called a similarly challenging shot, and dropped the ball clean and quick, sending the cue-ball ricocheting around the table before meeting its target with a soft snick. The target ball found the pocket and rumbled through the channels under the table, arriving in the trough with a thunder and clack of balls hitting each other.

“Such a sexy game,” Janine said, on the sidelines, putting in a bit of extra flutter and camp just to rattle Sherlock’s cage. “So interesting watching men play with their sticks and balls.”

The young tech geeks laughed with her, and looked speculatively at a second table. Sherlock was willing to bet more than the tenner he was already wagering that the lot of them would dedicate more time to pool than Janine’s comment actually warranted, just in the hope that she or some other attractive young woman would really mean it. “Play with their sticks and balls” indeed!

But a smile was fighting at the corners of his mouth. She amused him.

She aroused him—enough so that she’d never realized he’d held back when he’d drawn her into relationship with him before, all to catch Magnussen at a disadvantage. She was so at ease with her own desire. He remembered their first contact, at John and Mary’s wedding. She’d laughed as he helped her look for a lover—so comfortable with her own frank desire for something special…

He and Lestrade passed the play back and forth between them, neither trying too hard to rule the table, but neither failing to show off their chops either. In the end Sherlock won the round, but doubled down on the bet, encouraging another round that Lestrade won.

“I’ve got some surveillance I want you to help with,” Sherlock murmured, as they set aside the cues and surrendered the table to other players.

“I thought this was your gig for the night?”

“Mmmm.” He flicked his eyes to Janine. “We were the distraction. Later, though…”

“More of this Moriarty business?”

“Not…exactly.”

“Why not John? Or will Mary keep him home nights?” Lestrade chuckled. “Marriage can do that…”

“No. Mary might even help, if it were something I chose to bring them in on.” Sherlock studied Lestrade, trying to fathom the man. “Something I think you have the better background for.”

Lestrade’s eyebrows jumped. “Mmmm?”

Sherlock gathered up their glasses, not looking at Lestrade again. “Mmmm.” He gave a tight, forced smile. “Last round is on you, Garth.” He handed the glasses to Lestrade, insinuated a bentwood chair between Janine and one of her suitors, and flung a careless arm over her shoulders, dropping  a kiss on her cheekbone. He wasn’t sure if he was performing his cover—or something else. He know knew the possessive placement of the chair, the arm, and the kiss, were necessary. Absolutely necessary.

oOo

“Huh. Got an acceptance from Mycroft,” Mary murmured as she flicked through the emails for the day. “Fancy that—Mycroft Holmes at our Halloween party.” She lay belly down on the bed in their bedroom, wearing pajamas consisting of a pink tank top and a pair of jersey-knit capris printed with Hello Kitty faces.

“You sure of that?” John asked, dropping over and beside her, one arm wrapping around her. He peered over her shoulder at the screen. “Huh. Damn. You’re right.”

“You thought I imagined it?” Mary laughed, elbowing him. “Gerroff me, you great galumph. You’re heavy.”

“Didn’t say that last night,” he pointed out mischievously.

“Kind of busy at the time,” she said, fighting back a smile. “Look at this: he wants to know what to wear, bless him.”

“Tell him there’s a terrible shortage of pole dancers coming to the party.”

“I will not. Poor man. I’ll tell him we’re trying to be gentle to the virgins, and he can come in a black and white tux as either a penguin or a maître d’.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “If that man doesn’t own his own bespoke tux I’ll…I’ll…”

“What?”

“I don’t know what.”

“I could make suggestions, Mrs. Watson.”

“You can always make suggestions, starting with suggesting we play doctor and nurse. You’re predictable, you are.”

They were both happy. Things were good…good in ways they couldn’t help but hope would turn out to be “normal.” John thought he could live years and years and years with this as his daily bread-and-butter normalcy. Bright, witty, funny wife—brave and capable and just the right amount of dangerous. Beautiful daughter. Lunatic best friend.

“How’d Sherlock get him to agree to come,” he said, pondering.

“No idea and I’m not asking. Anything personal between Sherlock and Mycroft is, in my opinion, too much information. Some things should stay inside families and never see the light of day.”

“Think he threatened the life of the Queen?”

“No. Mycroft would have killed him for that. Maybe offered to run down some information for Mycroft—legwork. Or promised Anthea an entire box of aphrodisiac Belgian chocs if she talked big brother into it. Sounds nefarious. I can see the headlines,” Mary said, finishing her return email to Mycroft and signing off, before squirming onto her back. She wrapped her arms around John’s chest. “Whitehall Horror—Minor Government Official Blackmailed in Nepotistic Nightmare.” She kissed his chin, then his nose, then, tenderly, his mouth. They savoured the smile shared between them.

“No one will believe it. The ones who don’t know them won’t believe Sherlock didn’t win. The ones who do won’t believe Mycroft didn’t.”

“Mmm.” She tucked her face in the turn of John’s shoulder, snuffling up the sweet, clean lavender small of their bath gel and the faint menthol tang of his shaving cream. “So, again—how did Sherlock do it? I mean, last I could see they were barely talking to each other—and were miserable pillocks to each other when they did.”

“No idea,” John said. “Are you going to ask?”

“No,” she smiled. “No, I am not. I’m a trained operative, I am. I know when it’s too dangerous to risk it. I’m taking my gift horse and refusing to look anywhere near its mouth.”

“Maybe they’re making peace,” John said.

“Uh…do you believe that?”

“No,” he said, instantly. “Not at all. Not really. You?”

“I’ve got more faith in Dorothy’s tornado taking me to Oz.”

“No, that’s Virgin Airlines,” John said. “Different travel technique entirely.”

“Different destination, too.”

She kissed him again. He kissed her. Soon they had both forgotten Mycroft’s acceptance, and stopped wondering at how strange it was.

oOo

Sherlock parted company with Janine, calling her a cab to take her to her hotel. He looked at Lestrade and nodded, then slipped silent into an alley, the hem of his coat batting and billowing against his calves. Lestrade fell in behind him.

Sherlock bounced up, pressed a palm on the lid of a skip and carried the leap up, tucking his feet neatly next to his hand, crouching for a moment like a cat before uncoiling upward, snatching the lower run of a fire-escape. He scrambled up the ladder then raced from iron landing to iron landing, until he could climb no farther. He threw himself into a corner of the exterior, chimneyed upward, his soles pressing brick, his shoulders bracing him as he reached up and grabbed the upper edge of the roof parapet. When he was firmly set, he arched up and over, feet rising, body twisting, until he knelt on the roof tiles, looking down at Lestrade, who crept cautiously up the same route.

“I’ll give you a hand at the top landing.”

“Can get myself up.”

“Yes. But I can help you. And I know your great affection for heights.”

“Sarky bastard.”

“Yes, yes.” Sherlock held his hand down, and braced himself as Lestrade rappelled the last few feet using Sherlock as his anchor rope. Then he stood and the race continued, from roof to roof under the dull, glowing-mist sky of London.

“Heading for Pall Mall?”

“Mmmmm.” Sherlock waited, unsure if Mycroft had ever had Lestrade to his private rooms opposite the Diogenes. He was sad, but not surprised as it became clear Lestrade had no idea of Mycroft’s address. “Shhh. We don’t have much time—I’ve arranged for a circuit to short out in five minutes.”

The short allowed Sherlock to open a window in the second storey at the back of Mycroft’s flat. He and Lestrade tumbled in, and slid the window shut. Sherlock instantly handed Lestrade a small selection of bugs and cameras, and gestured to the rooms beyond. “Be quiet. I don’t think anyone’s here—but I could be wrong.”

He lied.

 He darted silently, planting his own handful of devices, watching Lestrade work in the direction Sherlock had steered him into—a direction that ended reliably in one place. Down a corridor, to an arched doorway leading out onto a shallow balcony overlooking the room below.

Sherlock could hear Lestrade pause on the thick carpet of the corridor, even the soft padded hush of his footsteps stilled. Beyond there was motion, so soft as to be almost subliminal.

Sherlock ghosted up the corridor behind his old associate.

City-light bled in from the room beyond: the dull, soft electric red glimmer varied by passing car lights reflecting off the buildings beyond, or shining in the windows. Varied by neon, varied by sweep lights, changed moment by moment, never quite still. Sherlock’s hand settled in the small of Lestrade’s back. He leaned in. “Surveillance opportunity.”

Lestrade twisted his head back to scowl at Sherlock, then cat-footed his way to the arched door frame. Sherlock stood close behind him, cutting off retreat….knowing already what they’d see.

Mycroft was a quiet man: reserved, private, introverted. He didn’t much like physical exertion, and he avoided field work—but he was trained and he worked to remain fit for service. He moved softly, steadily through the exercises that kept him trim and fight-ready—exercises to remain limber, to maintain flexibility and strength. Not as graceful as tai chi, it was still not so different. Stretch, turn, brace, drop. Steady, patient work in the dark room, lit only by light from the world beyond. Sherlock smiled, his mouth tight, seeing exactly what he’d expected to see—what he’d deduced had to be part of Mycroft’s regimen. No one stayed as fit as Mycroft without working at it somehow—not even a Holmes.

Lestrade stood still and silent, watching the figure below. Mycroft was dressed in running togs. He was not, Sherlock thought, particularly beautiful—but he was dutiful, and diligent. Lestrade was still, observing.

Then Mycroft surprised both his hidden watchers. He completed a set of ten alternating lunges, dropping deep enough to make Sherlock’s balls twinge in sympathetic pain at the inevitable stretch that had to create. He came up then, stretched wide like a starfish—and then, suddenly, with a chuckle audible up on the balcony, he murmured “Alley-oop,” gave a bounce, and performed not one but three perfect forward handsprings, coming to a stop with a mischievous grin in front of a plate-glass window looking out onto the street. Mycroft wrapped his arms around himself, then, and stared out. He sighed and turned, walking directly under the little balcony.

Sherlock tugged Lestrade’s shirt. “He’s going to come up here,” he said, deducing rather than knowing that Mycroft would head for the shower, then to bed. “We have to get out.”

Lestrade looked at Sherlock, angry and wide-eyed—then began a hurried retreat to the window. Moments later he was out, then up to the roof, then hunkered on the next building glowering at Sherlock, who had trailed along behind making sure the window closed and latched behind them.

“Why did we do that?” He grumbled, angry and unsettled. “Why did we just break into Mycroft Sodding Holmes’ house and bug it?”

Sherlock shrugged, saying nothing, hands digging into trouser pockets.

“Sherlock that was—stupid. That was bloody, bloody stupid.”

Sherlock ignored him, leaning silent against a terra cotta chimney pot.

“Is this something to do with Moriarty? Has he threatened Mycroft?” Lestrade’s voice was gruff and anxious. “You can’t keep him safe by yourself, Sherlock. Not if it’s Moriarty. Is it Moriarty?”

“I worry about Mycroft,” Sherlock said, softly. “I worry about him…constantly.”

Even Sherlock didn’t know if he told the truth or lied. But Mycroft was alone, and becoming more so—and Sherlock had made his mind up. He was breaking out of the prison of his own personal solitude and isolation—and if he was breaking out of prison, he was by God going to bring his brother with him.

“He’s alone,” he added, for good measure, hitting the pressure point with gusto. “He thinks he’s safer that way. But I worry…”

He saw something shift in Lestrade’s expression then—minor, fleeting, but something that said emotion had struck.

It might not be enough. It probably wasn’t enough—but it was a start, and Sherlock had plenty of additional tricks ready as well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, regarding Mycroft's exercise...
> 
> To keep fit you really are stuck with "use it or lose it." So Mycroft has to exercise for flexibility and range of motion, if he's got and maintains any martial arts skills at all. And we also know that at least sometimes he goes on jogging sorts of health regimen. So that didn't seem unreasonable, and nighttime by himself before bed in a nice, dark, quiet room seemed very in keeping for Mycroft.
> 
> As for the triple handspring? God Bless Mark Gatiss for his delightful little outbreaks of Mycroftian whimsey. From the swing of his brolly to the bounce off his treadmill, Mycroft, the presumed sober-sides vanilla character, demonstrades dozens of little quirky, quixotic behaviors. It's part of the fun of Mycroft: he pretends to be such a sobersides, but he's forever busting a move and otherwise sparkling with his sense of humor about his world and himself. All that icy cold--and it falls apart as he walks out of Sherlock's flat with his umbrella not neatly hooked over his arm--but cocked over his shoulder, Gene Kelly style. 
> 
> So I felt entirely safe adding that triple handspring and chuckle, and the alley-oop. Just when you think Mycroft could not possibly be more completely and totally humorless and drab, he sparkles and shines and shows us an emotionally and personally quriky, lovable, expressive personality hiding behind the curtain...and thanks to Sherlock being manipulative and no respecter of privacy, Lestrade got to witness an aspect of Mycroft he would otherwise never have seen.


End file.
